Paradoxes and Pitfalls in Using Fuzzy Set QCA: Illustrations from a Critical Review of a Study of Educational Inequality

Charles Ragin's crisp set and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA and fsQCA) are being used by increasing numbers of social scientists interested in combining analytic rigour with case-based approaches. As with all techniques that become available in easy-to-use software packages, there is a danger that QCA will come to be used in a routinised manner, with not enough attention being paid to its particular strengths and weaknesses. Users of fsQCA in particular need to be very aware of particular problems that can arise when fuzzy logic lies behind their analyses. This paper aims to increase its readers' understanding of some of these problems and of some means by which they might be alleviated. We use a critical discussion of a recent paper by Freitag and Schlicht addressing social inequality in education in Germany as our vehicle. After summarising the substantive claims of the paper, we explain some key features of QCA. We subsequently discuss two main issues, (i) limited diversity and the various ways of using counterfactual reasoning to address it, and (ii) the logical paradoxes that can arise when using fsQCA. Making different choices than Freitag and Schlicht do in respect of dealing with these two issues, we undertake some reanalysis of their data, showing that their conclusions must be treated with some caution. We end by drawing some general lessons for users of QCA.Qualitative Comparative Analysis, FsQCA, Educational Inequality, German Educational Policy, Limited Diversity, Counterfactual Reasoning, Necessary and Sufficient Conditions, Case-Based Methods, Small n Methods, Fuzzy Logic

TGF-beta signaling proteins and the Protein Ontology

The Protein Ontology (PRO) is designed as a formal and principled Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry ontology for proteins. The components of PRO extend from a classification of proteins on the basis of evolutionary relationships at the homeomorphic level to the representation of the multiple protein forms of a gene, including those resulting from alternative splicing, cleavage and/or posttranslational modifications. Focusing specifically on the TGF-beta signaling proteins, we describe the building, curation, usage and dissemination of PRO. PRO provides a framework for the formal representation of protein classes and protein forms in the OBO Foundry. It is designed to enable data retrieval and integration and machine reasoning at the molecular level of proteins, thereby facilitating cross-species comparisons, pathway analysis, disease modeling and the generation of new hypotheses

ON THE RELATION OF PRODUCTS OF ACTIVATED LYMPHOCYTES TO CELL-MEDIATED CYTOLYSIS

Experiments have been designed to test the hypothesis that soluble mediator production and T-cell-mediated cytotoxicity are necessarily related phenomena, and that soluble mediators may be involved in the mechanism of cytolysis. To this end, agents known to inhibit T-cell-mediated lysis in vitro have been studied for their effects on the production of two lymphocyte-derived mediators, lymphotoxin (LT) and migration inhibitory factor (MIF). A clear dissociation between mediator production and cell-mediated cytolysis was found using inhibitors of protein synthesis. Pactamycin and emetine, in doses of 10–7 M to 10–6 M, suppressed production of MIF and LT with only slight effect on killing of mastocytoma cells by immune T cells. On the other hand colchicine and vinblastine inhibited T-cell-mediated cytolysis in a dose-related manner but had no significant effect on either MIF or LT production, A striking dichotomy was also observed after augmentation of intracellular cyclic 3'5' adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) levels with cholera enterotoxin. Increased cAMP levels were associated with abrogation of direct lytic activity, but were without significant effect on MIF or LT production in guinea pigs or mice. These findings indicate that mediator production and direct lymphocyte-mediated cytolysis can be experimentally dissociated and represent independent cell-mediated immune functions

Understanding and Application of Culturally Diverse Issues Within University Settings

This qualitative study focused on exploring the knowledge and beliefs of university faculty, staff and students regarding: the effects of multi-culturalism and immigration on their professional lives; the influence of cultural issues within the university setting; and, finally, the teaching and learning needs of culturally diverse students. The major findings include the limited knowledge base held by all groups in the sample about multi- culturalism and immigration with subsequent little effect on their professionall lives. However, of the three groups, the student group more readily recognized that they have little preparation for the multicultural interactions that will occur in their future professional practices. Although some faculty members included other teaching experiences and strategies to expose students to diversity, they also admitted to a lack of expertise in this area.Cette étude qualitative explore les connaissances et les convictions des professeurs, du personnel universitaire et des étudiants en ce qui a trait aux effets de l'immigration et de la diversité culturelle sur leur vie professionnelle, à l'influence de la question culturelle dans l'environnement universitaire, ainsi qu'aux besoins liés à l'apprentissage et la formation des étudiants de cultures diverses. Les résultats essentiels indiquent la piètre connaissance qu'ont ces différents milieux des questions touchant la diversité culturelle, ce qui a pour corrélat une absence apparente d'influence de cette diversité sur leur vie professionnelle. Toutefois, sur l'ensemble des trois groupes consultés, les étudiants semblent plus prompts à reconnaître leur absence de formation en la matière: ils se sentent peu préparés aux interactions pluriculturelles inhérentes à leur vie professionnelle à venir. Bien que quelques professeurs intègrent à leur enseignement des stratégies et des expériences variées afin d'exposer les étudiants à la diversité culturelle, ils reconnaissent également un manque de compétence spécialisée dans ce domaine

Securitization and the construction of security

Those interested in the construction of security in contemporary international politics have increasingly turned to the conceptual framework of `securitization'. This article argues that while an important and innovative contribution, the securitization framework is problematically narrow in three senses. First, the form of act constructing security is defined narrowly, with the focus on the speech of dominant actors. Second, the context of the act is defined narrowly, with the focus only on the moment of intervention. Finally, the framework of securitization is narrow in the sense that the nature of the act is defined solely in terms of the designation of threats. In outlining this critique, the article points to possibilities for developing the framework further as well as for the need for those applying it to recognize both limits of their claims and the normative implications of their analysis. I conclude by pointing to how the framework might fit within a research agenda concerned with the broader construction of security

A domain ontology for the non-coding RNA field

Identification of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) has been significantly enhanced due to the rapid advancement in sequencing technologies. On the other hand, semantic annotation of ncRNA data lag behind their identification, and there is a great need to effectively integrate discovery from relevant communities. To this end, the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) is being developed to provide a precisely defined ncRNA controlled vocabulary, which can fill a specific and highly needed niche in unification of ncRNA biology

The representation of protein complexes in the Protein Ontology

Representing species-specific proteins and protein complexes in ontologies that are both human and machine-readable facilitates the retrieval, analysis, and interpretation of genome-scale data sets. Although existing protin-centric informatics resources provide the biomedical research community with well-curated compendia of protein sequence and structure, these resources lack formal ontological representations of the relationships among the proteins themselves. The Protein Ontology (PRO) Consortium is filling this informatics resource gap by developing ontological representations and relationships among proteins and their variants and modified forms. Because proteins are often functional only as members of stable protein complexes, the PRO Consortium, in collaboration with existing protein and pathway databases, has launched a new initiative to implement logical and consistent representation of protein complexes. We describe here how the PRO Consortium is meeting the challenge of representing species-specific protein complexes, how protein complex representation in PRO supports annotation of protein complexes and comparative biology, and how PRO is being integrated into existing community bioinformatics resources. The PRO resource is accessible at http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro/